Presently there are machines which harvest cotton bolls from cotton plants and then use an onboard baler to form a cylindrical cotton module. So that the cotton module holds its form and is protected from the elements until it is transported to a gin, the module is wrapped in a plastic covering before being deposited on the ground by the harvester.
It has been found that the outer surface of the wrapped cotton module tends to be irregular in shape, this irregularity in shape being in the nature of lumps of various sizes dispersed about the circumference of the module. At times, these lumps are quite excessive and cause the baler hydraulic drive system, that is used for driving certain ones of driven rolls of the module-forming chamber, to stall. In addition, the lumps introduce many problematic issues with the plastic wrap, such as, making the plastic prone to being torn thereby permitting entry of contaminates, pulling the plastic away from the ends of the module thereby causing a reduction in, and/or the elimination of, coverage of the ends of the module, and leaving areas unsupported where there are voids in the cotton. Further, at the gin, machinery used to turn the cotton module when removing the plastic wrap does not operate as well with lumpy modules.
It is presently thought that the lumps are introduced at the module surface during the operation of placing a plastic wrapping on the module. Specifically, the circumference of the module-forming chamber is defined by a plurality of endless belts supported in side-by-side relationship across a plurality of fixed and movable rolls, with one of the fixed rolls being a lower front roll of a discharge gate forming a rear section of the module-forming chamber, with the lower front gate roll defining a rear boundary of an inlet located at the bottom of the module-forming chamber and with a front boundary of the inlet being defined by a starter roll. During formation of a cotton module in the module-forming chamber, cotton is fed into the inlet on a path which directs it against the front of the lower gate roll. As the forming module is rotated, cotton at the surface of the module expands in the inlet zone between the starter roll and the lower front gate roll. This expanded cotton, together with incoming cotton, is actively lifted onto the surface of the growing cotton module by the side edges of the belts which come into contact with the fluffy cotton. In one known machine, eleven module-forming belts are used, resulting in twenty two edges being available to aid in transporting the cotton. Upon a cotton module being completed within the module-forming chamber, the introduction of further cotton is interrupted and plastic wrapping material in introduced into the inlet at the bottom of the module-forming chamber from a source roll carried at the rear of the discharge gate. The completed cotton module continues to rotate and the introduced plastic is caught between the belts and the rotating module and is carried around by the module. During the first revolution of the module, the cotton at the surface of the unwrapped portion of the module still expands at the chamber inlet in the zone between the starter roll and the lower front gate roll. However, since the module-forming belts at their region of engagement with the lower front gate roll are now covered with plastic, the edges are no longer available for actively lifting the expanded cotton, and this cotton momentarily hesitates, thus becoming bunched at various locations along the front of the lower front gate roll, with these bunches eventually entering the pinch point between the roll-supported wrapping material and the surface of the formed module so as to form lumps beneath the wrapping material. The formation of bunches of cotton which are subsequently fed onto the module surface is an irregular happenstance, thus resulting in a wrapped module having a lumpy exterior.
The problem to be solved then is to provide a module-forming chamber arrangement constructed so as to eliminate or reduce the formation of lumps on the surface of a wrapped cotton module.